Rev. Jesse Jackson on Education

Civil Rights Activist

Protested courses on Western Culture as racist & sexist

Stanford University had a very popular required course in Western culture. But radicals and minorities objected both because Western culture should not be celebrated, being racist, sexist, violent, imperialistic, and because the authors that were assigne
--Aristotle, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Locke, Shakespeare--were all white males. The culmination of the campaign consisted of a conga line snaking across campus, led by Jesse Jackson, the protestors chanting, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western culture's gotta go."
And go it did. Universities routinely collapse when hit from that end of the cultural and political spectrum. Stanford revised the course, eliminating some of the white male authors and replacing them with women writers "of color," some of them bitterly
hostile to Western civilization. In capitulating, Stanford acquiesced in the claim that Western culture is at least highly suspect and that its great works are little more than justification of white male dominance.

Lifetime of prayer, not one minute in school

We talk so much about values these days in the political dialogue. One big debate is whether we could stop people from breaking out into character collapses-crime, abuse-if we would just have a minute of prayer in school. Moses was not that ambitious.

When he looked at a recently freed people whose lives had become loose, a people who no longer honored their God or their parents, a people who had lost a sense of trust, he knew a minute of prayer with a pistol in your pocket was not enough.

Moses went to the mountain and he did the praying. God gave him a plan. He gave them land for economic opportunity, the right to political self-determination, adequate food, and then commandments. The same idea will work here.
We need to tell those who think a minute of prayer is the answer, “Let us have a life of prayer and service and care and feeding. Let us have an urban policy that consists of economic development, self-determination, and loyalty to ten commandments.

Involve parents in school decision-making

Jackson’s PUSH/Excel for the schools was a moral campaign requiring pledges from parents and students as well as teachers to devote themselves to academic achievement. Two novel aspects of the program helped create controversy.
One was Jackson’s insistence that students register to vote as a means of political empowerment. He often spoke of students’ receiving a diploma in one hand and a voter registration card in the other.
A second, more controversial aspect of the program was parental involvement in the schools in decision-making. School administrators and teachers unions have often objected to such community involvement and Project Excel was no exception.
Jackson’s moral campaign for academic achievement ran into the hard realities of school politics.

Choice schools to choice children is un-American

Watch out when someone tells you a political solution to our education problems is to offer a few choice schools for a few choice children. That was Nebuchadnezzar’s plan in the first book of Daniel.
[He took] the most blessed and talented children, and took them away to train them. Jesus comes at that from another angle. He did not start with the most talented, the most blessed and the most gifted, but rather, the least of these.
We must ask ourselves, “But what about the unchosen people, everyday people like you and me?” What about those who are not perfect?

That is what makes America different, that we care about everyday people. It is a measure of the American character how we treat the least of these. That is why I do not want to be color-blind; I want to be color-caring.